Subject: Re: RFC Author Count and IPR

From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 14:43:00 -0400

Authorship discussions have a long history in the sciences. I'm not 
aware of any other scientific or technical publication that limits the 
number of authors. (Indeed, I have had to extend the maximum author 
count on a largish conference management system I run [edas.info] a few 
times.) The current limit of 5 seems to be motivated by formatting 
constraints and maybe by the notion that "vanity" publishing should be 
prevented. It is not clear to me that these motivations have legal 
standing and essentially, for practical purposes, force authors to give 
up their rights. In the past, I know that for some drafts, this limit 
has been extended when the AD made the right noises to the RFC editor, 
so it is not universally observed.

My understanding is that "contributors" generally have inferior rights, 
not much different from those individuals acknowledged in the 
acknowledgment section of technical papers and RFCs.

After some of the recent science scandals, there also seems to be a 
movement afoot (e.g., for Science and Nature) to force all authors to 
take responsibility for the paper and its content. That's a flip-side, 
also from an IPR perspective: If somebody can plausibly claim that they 
just got added to the author list without their consent, they could 
weasle out of the IPR disclosure rules. At least from my experience, it 
is not uncommon that I-D authors add others as a courtesy and, 
currently, nobody seems to check whether these authors consented to 
being an author...

Henning

Vijay Devarapallli wrote:
> On 5/24/06, Sam Hartman <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
>> That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed
>> significant chunks of text, you still need to get their clearance to
>> do anything interesting with that text.
> 
> typically the unlisted authors are ignored.
> 
> also during the AUTH48 period, the RFC Editor contacts only the listed 
> authors.
> 
> Vijay
> 
> 
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From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 14:42:00 -0400

Sam:

If the people with copyright interest are the combination of the 
authors plus the contributors, then we need to specify this in a BCP.

Does the RFC Editor have to contact the members of both lists during 
Auth48?  If so, I would suggest that the RFf Editor only needs a 
positive reply from the authors, but that the contributors only need 
to respond if they discover a change that is needed.

Russ

At 02:35 PM 5/24/2006, Sam Hartman wrote:
> >>>>> "Russ" == Russ Housley <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>     Russ> Sam: We need a way to track the people that have copyright
>     Russ> interest.  I had always assumed this was the author list.
>     Russ> If we are going to continue to limit the author count to
>     Russ> five people, then there needs to be a place where the people
>     Russ> with copyright interest are listed in the document.  This is
>     Russ> the reason that I included the techspec mail list on my
>     Russ> posting.
>
>I think that's probably authors?+contributors.

---

From: Ken Raeburn <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 14:58:38 -0400

> authors plus the contributors, then we need to specify this in a BCP.

We might also want to suggest that the acknowledgment specifically  
indicate if someone contributed text, as a text-contributor may have  
rights that an idea-contributor does not.  With the default  
assumption being that "contributed", if not clarified, means  
"contributed text and/or ideas".

There's also the related issue of text taken from a previous RFC -- I  
would think it would suffice to acknowledge the source of the text,  
rather than merging contributor/author lists.  (Though if the  
previous author list is small and the copied text is large, specific,  
explicit acknowledgment in the new document is probably the polite  
thing to do.)  But either way, those authors may also retain  
copyright interest in the new document.

> Does the RFC Editor have to contact the members of both lists  
> during Auth48?  If so, I would suggest that the RFf Editor only  
> needs a positive reply from the authors, but that the contributors  
> only need to respond if they discover a change that is needed.

I would think the RFC Editor probably does not need to; after all,  
isn't the short list also (a superset of) the people already acting  
as editors on behalf of the working group, other contributors, etc?   
Those people may choose to include various contributors in the Auth48  
review, or not.

Ken

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From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 19:13:45 +0200

Dear Russ,
the authors can either be individuals or WGs. The practice to quote 
authors for WG documents while they are a cooperative work seems a 
wrong practice to me. Copyrights' period take into consideration the 
date of the death of the last contributor. The name of all the 
members of a WG should be noted if the rights are not exclusively 
with the IETF. When a group of individuals wants to propose a 
document its members known the numerus clausus before (whatever the 
number). The missing possibility is for an entity to introduce a 
collective Draft. Only IAN, IESG, etc.can introduce a Draft under 
their name. IMHO WG2 and R&D organisations should too.
jfc

At 18:37 24/05/2006, Russ Housley wrote:

>I am concerned that the current RFC Editor practice that limits the 
>number of authors is in conflict with the IETF IPR policies.  The 
>RFC Editor currently limits the author count to five people.  Recent 
>IPR WG discussions make it clear to me that authors retain 
>significant copyright.
>
>In one of the working groups in the Security Area, there is a 
>document with six authors on it.  I asked the WG chairs to reduce 
>the author count in the hope of avoiding a problem down the 
>road.  At that time, I was not aware of the copyright.  Now, I think 
>I gave the WG Chairs inappropriate directions.
>
>The IESG and the whole Internet Community needs clear direction on 
>this issue.  I suspect that the IPR WG will be a part of the process 
>to resolve it.  Also, the Tech Spec document, which is currently in 
>Last Call, many need to include a requirement that the RFC Editor 
>explicitly acknowledge copyright holders in some fashion.
>
>Russ
>
>

---

From: "Vijay Devarapallli" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 11:30:50 -0700

also during the AUTH48 period, the RFC Editor contacts only the listed authors.

Vijay

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 14:10:22 -0400

On Monday, June 05, 2006 09:16:18 AM -0700 Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

> Wouldn't it make more sense for the rules concerning author list to be
> dictated by the combination of the needs to state primary resonsibility,
> ie, those writing the docs,  and logistics/processing needs of those
> publishing it?

I certainly think it would.